


i don't even have to fake it now

by FakePlastikTrees



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:38:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1708514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakePlastikTrees/pseuds/FakePlastikTrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mindy and Danny go to a Springsteen show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't even have to fake it now

**Author's Note:**

> This is very short and sweet. It's from a Tumblr prompt. I had the original Prompt bookmarked and now it's gone, so I don't recall the name of the user who requested it but I hope they read it. The title is from the Lana Del Rey song American. I love her so much and I've wanted an excuse to use this song somehow, for Dandy, for the Springsteen reference obviously. Hope you guys like it <3

* * *

 

 

 **“Springsteen is the king, don’t you think?”** I was like, **“Hell yeah, that guy can sing.”**

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Mindy has pretended to like a lot of music she secretly hates to make her boyfriends happy.

 

She’s pretended to like classical music even though, while pretty as the score of some indie chick flick where Rachel McAdams stares lovingly and in slow motion at some tall and gangly blond nerd, usually puts her to sleep. She’s pretended to like country music—like really bad country music that was recorded between the eighties and nineties, not the really cool and edgy stuff predating that like Johnny Cash and Patsy Kline or the stuff that came after like Taylor Swift and The Rascal Flatts—and that was the darkest period for her. There was the time she dated the vegan guy who only listened to French music, and okay, the music was pretty, again, as background music to something with good looking people staring in slow motion at each other, she had no idea what anyone was saying and it just gave her a headache.

 

With Danny, she doesn’t have to pretend to hate his music. Because some of it, she likes, what she hates she can ignore or tell him about it and then he’ll ignore her, and a lot of it—though she’ll never in a million years unless one of them is dying confess to—she has learn to really appreciate.

 

Like, Bruce Springsteen.

 

It’s not like she’s never heard of the guy or anything, she’s just never really sat down and listened to the man. The _boss_. But one day, after she and Danny had had a particularly _spectacularly_ stupid fight over something she doesn’t even remember, she downloaded Born to Run and listened to the entirety of the album during her lunch break at work, with her ear buds in, just in case Danny happened to walk by her office. She didn’t want him thinking she was making an effort or anything. Where’s the fun in that?

 

As the title track played for the fourth time in a row, she quickly pulled up TicketMaster and found two tickets to the next Springsteen concert—show. The next Springsteen show.

 

Which brings her now, two months later, to the end of it, walking out of Madison Square Garden, under the welcomed weight of Danny’s arm across her shoulders.

 

Her ears are still thumping they way they do whenever she goes to a concert (or show), her throat is a little sore from cheering, Danny is humming and she doesn’t think he even knows he’s doing it.

 

It takes her only a moment to recognize the little tune. _She’s The One._

 

She hugs his waist a little tighter as they walk and leans into him as the memory comes back to her, when the song began about thirty minutes ago and he reached for her hand. Her fingers were sticky with powdered sugar and caramel from her (okay their) funnel cake, and she fully expected him to scold her over the thumping, belting music or at least grimace scornfully for eating like a child, but he lifted her fingers to his lips instead and licked the sugar and caramel off the tips with a  smile on his face. She blushed. Embarrassingly deep. Crimson even. And then, he kissed her. She could taste the sweetness of the snack in his mouth and that was how they made out for a solid four and a half minutes at a Springsteen concert. _Show_. Springsteen show.

 

He smells like a beer and his leather jacket, and cigarette smoke—not his, thank you very much, he’s on the patch now—and she wants to kiss him. So, when they get a moment where the crowd gets a little stuck and he’s beginning to complain about it, she tugs at the lapels of his jacket and kisses him soundly. He smiles into it, kisses the top of her head when they pull apart and Mindy swear she can still hear The E Street Band playing.

 

“Did you like it?” He asks, hopeful as she’s ever seen anyone.

 

“I loved it.”

 

She loves seeing him like this. She likes making him happy. He’s had so much in his life that’s done the exact opposite that whenever she gets the chance to have a moment with him, a moment where they’re both truly and honestly happy, she will do anything to make it last as long as possible.

 

“Good, I’m glad.”

 

“Can we get tee shirts?”

 

“Yeah, you want one?” He asks, already steering her towards the mob of Springsteen aficionados already getting their money’s worth of merch.

 

“Yeah,” She nods.

 

“Okay.”

 

“I want one for later.”

 

“Later?” he asks offhandedly, shielding her from a particularly drunk man stumbling past them.

 

“Yeah, I want to wear it _later_.”

 

“Okay—jeez, buddy, move it along, huh?”

 

“Hey…” She stops him momentarily with a hand on his stomach, batting her eyelashes for effect a couple of times, drumming her fingers against his shirt, “—how about I tell you I want to bang you while wearing a Bruce Springsteen tee shirt and you get what I’m saying, Castellano? Do I have to spell it out for you?”

 

He instantly gets that worried, frazzled, but adorably endearing look on his face and he turns to hold her shoulders as he looks intensely into her eyes. “This’ll be faster if I just go get the tee shirt and you wait right here. Wait right here, don’t move.”

 

“Okay,” she says to the back of his head, as he’s already pushing through half the crowd at an impressive speed.

 

She isn’t sure if they were the type of couple to have a song. But maybe, if they decided to have a handful of songs, there would be one or two Springsteen tunes in there she wouldn’t have to pretend to like for Danny and the sake of his ego. And maybe a song or two that he will openly hate but listen to anyway.


End file.
